Groups have key role in crime fight

I totally agree with them, but, I strongly believe that people in each community could help themselves so much more.

It is a well known fact that if young vandals and petty criminals are caught and given a stern warning by police at that early stage, they are less likely to go on to commit more and worse crimes.

When a criminal gets away with a small theft, they go on to do worse and bigger crimes, so we could have a huge impact in our society if communities helped catch them earlier.

In fact if we took the time and trouble to engage youngsters in conversation and give them something useful to do, the problems would lessen anyway.

The police can't do the job we can do in our streets, towns and villages, even if they brought back the old village or local bobby.

They don't know if the people next door are on holiday, at work, at school or are elderly and vulnerable. It is up to us to know that and report anything suspicious.

We are all in an excellent position to help the police catch criminals if properly organised to do so, and one way is to use the Neighbourhood Watch system.

If takes time and a little effort setting it up but once up and running, works wonderfully. I really enjoyed doing this work over the past few years and gained a lot of satisfaction when criminals were caught.

NhW should be changing with the times and should also be helping police catch criminals by making a few adjustments to its work.

I set up and ran patrols. Now I can understand that being difficult or impossible in some areas but I believe that if a Watch wishes to patrol, using the official police guidelines, and if the police also wish it, then it should be up to that particular group of people.

We helped catch many criminals by patrolling and our area became a much nicer one to play, work and live in.

Mrs SUE SAVAGE

Treasurer, West Midlands Regional Neighbourhood Watch

Churchill

Kidderminster